RAN for multimedia delivery
A method is disclosed for avoiding unnecessary keepalive data transfers, comprising: receiving, at an upstream TCP connection endpoint in a radio access network (RAN) from an operator core network, an Internet Protocol (IP) packet; performing, at the upstream TCP connection endpoint, shallow packet inspection on the IP packet; and forwarding the IP packet to the downstream TCP connection endpoint in the RAN if the IP packet is not a keepalive packet, based on the performed shallow packet inspection. The upstream TCP connection endpoint in the RAN may be one of a nodeB, an eNodeB, a base transceiver station (BTS), a coordinating server, and a mobile edge computing (MEC) gateway. The downstream TCP connection endpoint in the RAN may be one of the nodeB, the eNodeB, or the base transceiver station (BTS).
1. A method comprising:
receiving, at an upstream gateway node, a video data flow;
sending, from the upstream gateway node, the video data flow to a Radio Access Network (RAN);
receiving, at the upstream gateway node, a congestion control message from the RAN based on a request for retransmission of a portion of the video data flow at the RAN to a User Equipment (UE);
determining, at the upstream gateway node, via shallow packet inspection on the portion of the video data flow, that the portion of the video data flow is not a message containing no content and is not a request for acknowledgement to keep a connection alive; and
performing, at the upstream gateway node, flow control of the video data flow based on the congestion control message.
2. The method of claim 1 further comprising buffering, at the upstream gateway node, the video data flow.
3. The method of claim 1 wherein the congestion control message is received at the upstream gateway node using an X2 Application Protocol (X2AP) message.
4. The method of claim 1 wherein the congestion control message comprises a message indicating that: a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) request was received at the RAN; that a radio modulation change is imminent; that a signal to noise ratio at an eNodeB for the UE has crossed a threshold; or that a UE is expected to perform a handover.
5. The method of claim 1 wherein performing, at the upstream gateway node, flow control may comprise: avoiding video retransmissions and backoff; buffering the video data flow; or sending video retransmission requests to cause the video data flow to be regulated at a particular data rate.
6. The method of claim 1 further comprising maintaining, at the upstream gateway node, a transport control protocol (TCP) timer for performing flow control of the video data flow; and maintaining, at the RAN, a hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) timer.
7. The method of claim 1 further comprising performing transcoding or transrating of the video data flow at the upstream gateway node.